Veil

by Aaron Overfield

  Ken stood and slowly walked toward Lundy and the guards. One of the guards gestured at the vAtoner’s chair, which was placed in front of Lundy. Ken walked to it and sat down. The other guard silently handed Ken a Universal Court vCollar; the guard didn’t want to insult one of the inventors of Veil by offering him instructions on how to use it.

  Ken placed the collar on himself and pressed the button on the side to set it to accept the incoming connection. He lifted his head and, for the first time, looked Jin’s murderer in the eyes. Lundy was staring back at him with a cold, angry expression. It was not at all the expression Ken would’ve expected from someone who was already subjected to ninety-nine Veil Atonements.

  A guard walked behind Lundy and pressed a button on his vPort. Lundy’s port beeped. Seconds later, the collar Ken was wearing also beeped, indicating that Lundy was now shadowing him. The judge began asking Ken a series of questions, all of which Ken ignored to the best of his abilities. Instead, Ken was reciting questions in his mind that—in conjunction with the shot Hunter administered—would trigger the fatal memory he Vaulted for several years. Then, he would deliver it unto Lundy.

  The chemical Hunter injected into Ken removed the buffer and as the memory was triggered, the pain hit Ken instantly. The pain was blinding, and the room burst into searing, white light. The pain originated in his face, near his brow, and radiated outward into his brain and down his spine. Ken clenched his jaw to keep from screaming as his eyes rolled back in their sockets, until only the whites were visible. Ken was finally able to force his eyes shut and clinched them with the same force he used to clench his jaw.

  The guard motioned to the judge to stop questioning, as Ken appeared to be in excruciating pain. When the judge paused, Ken raised his hand, palm facing up, and flapped his fingers, directing the guard to tell her to keep going. Judge Jacobsen resumed her questioning while Ken fought his absolute hardest to restrain the agony of the memory he privately triggered. The memory he was determined to deliver—in its entirety—to Lundy.

  The judge finished her questioning. Ken’s eyes remained shut as he reached up and pressed the button on the side of the collar. The collar beeped and a few seconds later so did Lundy’s vPort, which indicated his Witness was successfully transferred back over to him. Ken’s eyes shot open and Lundy was staring at him, smiling.

  The whites of Ken’s eyes were completely red from countless blood vessels that burst under the tremendous pressure of Jin’s memory. Lundy’s smile broadened as he delighted in soaking up every drop of pleasure he could find in watching Ken writhe from such obvious pain. Lundy didn’t want to be the only one to suffer that day.

  The judge politely asked if the vAtoner would like to remain and watch as the Accused underwent the vAtonement process. Unable to speak and with his back toward the judge, Ken raised one hand and shook his head. He removed the collar from his neck but fumbled and nearly dropped it as he stood and attempted to hand it back to one of the guards. The guard grabbed at the collar and caught it. He took it from Ken, who then stumbled in the general direction of the other Trustees.

  As Hunter rose and rushed forward to meet Ken, Suren stood and addressed the judge.

  “In Dr. Wise’s place, I request to watch the Accused undergo his Atonement.”

  “Of—of course,” Judge Jacobsen stammered. “Widow Tsay, by all means,” she continued and gestured toward the chair. “It’s your right.”

  While Hunter assisted Ken and helped him stagger from the courtroom, Suren headed in the opposite direction and took her rightful place in the vAtoner’s chair. The courtroom doors closed behind the couple and Ken could be heard—from inside the courtroom and outside the courthouse—as he began to scream. The remaining members of the court and everyone else who could hear Ken assumed he was grief-stricken; their pity and sympathy for the poor man only increased their disgust and disdain for the Accused.

  Trying to ignore Ken’s screams as best she could, Suren stared directly at the side of Lundy’s head. He was craning to look over his shoulder and see what was going on, to see what all the screaming was about, but he couldn’t see anything. The screams quickly faded off into the distance, so Lundy gave up and swung his head back around. He was startled as Suren, whose determined glare was trained right on him, instantly locked onto his eyes.

  “Ready, Ms … umm, Widow Tsay?” a guard asked.

  Suren nodded and listened closely for the beep as the guard pressed the button on Lundy’s unit. When she heard the beep, she adjusted herself in her chair, twisting her body a little to get comfortable. She wanted Lundy to know she was going to enjoy the show.

  Suren’s gaze stayed fixed on Lundy, and she watched as his eyes instantly became wide and watery—precisely two seconds after she heard his vPort beep. She counted. His mouth fell open, he pressed his head against the tall back of the wheelchair, and all of his limbs pulled against the restraints with enough force to cause the straps to cut deeply into his skin and immediately draw blood. Every muscle in his body remained tensed, and his jaw was forced open so widely that it caused the skin at the corners of his mouth to tear.

  The sound Lundy produced at that point was a deafening, thundering, blood-curdling scream, which no one present in that room would ever be able to forget. No one Veiling the trial would be able to forget it, either. Lundy screamed so loudly and so forcefully the pressure on his vocal cords became intense enough that he stopped producing any easily detectable sound. His throat created a dry crack of a hiss that reminded Suren of a dog whistle. The two guards were startled, and both took a large step backwards.

  Lundy’s entire body remained completely stiff, with his mouth opened all the way, and his head pressed against the back of the wheelchair so hard that his forehead turned white. His eyes rolled back into his head. He had the look of someone who coincidentally suffered from an epileptic seizure right as they were being electrocuted.

  His body shook violently in the wheelchair, and one of the guards lunged forward to grab the chair’s handles and stabilize it. Lundy’s throat relaxed and began to emit a deep gargling sound as his body convulsed. Suren leaned forward, placed one of her elbows on her knees, and rested her chin on her fist. She wanted to get a really, really good look.

  As Suren witnessed Lundy being slowly tortured to death by the experience of Jin’s memory—the memory of his own murder—she was filled with a particular satisfaction. It was the satisfaction one could only obtain from such a flawless act of poetic retribution. Although it didn’t bring Jin back to her in any meaningful way, watching his murderer get traumatized to death was thoroughly satiating. The revenge sealed a wound inside her and finally silenced a disquieting nag. It was a constant nagging moan from her heart, fueled by the knowledge that Jin’s murderer was still out there somewhere; Jin’s murderer was still walking around unpunished, untouched, unscathed.

  The revenge healed that part of her, and she didn’t give one good goddamn that people often claimed otherwise—that people claimed an act of revenge would ultimately provide no such satisfaction or relief. For Suren, it did. Oh, how it fucking did. Her only complaint was that the punishment couldn’t last longer; she wished the pain could follow Lundy beyond death, so he experienced it forever.

  And she meant real foreverness, not merely until the pain completely crushed his spirit down, so he disintegrated into nothingness. No, a vacuum of nothingness and emptiness purer than that of outer space was too good for him. She wanted Lundy’s existence to be entirely reduced to a pinpoint of agony inflicted upon him by Jin’s memory, and she wanted that agony delivered unto him—forfuckingever.

  Suren beamed into Lundy’s face as she witnessed his jaw continue to force itself open, tearing the corners of his mouth deeper and deeper. Blood steadily poured from the gashes like drool. To Suren’s amusement—and the horror of the rest of the court—Lundy’s jaw dislocated from the pressure, which created an audible snap, not unlike a hundred knuckles cracking in unison. His mouth conti
nued to force itself open, until both cheeks tore by approximately an inch. Suren wished she could measure, just to be sure.

  Although she desired to watch the show closely, Suren scooted the vAtoner chair back a smidge when Lundy urinated and shat himself. She wouldn’t discover it until she read the coroner’s report weeks later, but Lundy shat himself so forcefully he produced and burst out multiple hemorrhoids on the spot. When he did soil himself, he emptied the entire contents of his stomach. The stench of Lundy’s filth would’ve been enough to clear most courtrooms, if not for the fact that it was Lundy. No one present would miss out on watching him suffer.

  Not to be outdone by his mandible, both of Lundy’s clavicles snapped when his torso struggled to lunge forward. Since the straps on the wheelchair restrained his arms and legs, his shoulders had no choice but to dislocate themselves mercilessly. So, they did. And they did so to damn near complete detachment.

  It seemed Suren’s amusement simply would not end. Her only disappointment was that Lundy was eerily quiet. Again, unbeknownst to Suren and the court at the time, Lundy’s vocal cords hemorrhaged from the earlier pressure and coated his throat with sickly, gelatinous blood, whose shade of crimson was tinted with dark streams of pansy.

  As Lundy finally neared the end of the memory and what Suren was pretty sure would be the end of his life, his body stopped lunging forward and appeared to relax. His mouth closed halfway, and his eyes returned to somewhat normal. Suren couldn’t tell if he was looking at her—if he could look at anything—but when Lundy’s eyes landed in her direction, Suren placed both hands on her knees and leaned in closer to sweetly whisper to him.

  “Die already, you unloved demon.” Before she was finished with him, she sneered, shook her head, and sighed, “Such a little bitch.”

  Suren leaned back in her chair, all smiles. She did not blink again until she witnessed the life leave Lundy’s eyes and heard with her own ears as he exhaled his very last excruciated breath. Lundy’s entire body slouched, his head tilted to one side, and his eyes remained opened and transfixed straight ahead. Lundy’s eyes were dead, empty, and stared at nothing. Foamy drool ribboned with blood spilled from the ripped corner of his mouth and dripped from his chin.

  Still in full grin, Suren stood, smoothed her dress, and turned her head to the judge, making sure to erase the smile as she did so.

  She tilted her head slightly and furrowed her brow, all sufficiently enough to emote a convincing mixture of shock and bewilderment.

  The Great Widow Suren Tsay gasped, and with an increasingly high-pitched, confused tone, she delivered her line.

  “I think he’s—dead.”

  PART III - UNVEILING

  "the veil apocalypse will come and drown."

  21

  KAIROS

  “Good evening and thank you for watching. We’re live in Washington for a special broadcast tonight and for the closing of a story over a decade in the making. I’d like to thank you for joining us this evening. As the journalist lucky and honored enough to announce the technology that eventually became our New Veil World, it seemed fitting I be the one to bring you this breaking news to you tonight. I’m joined in the studio by Dr. Ivan Goss, whom many of you may remember. Dr. Goss, you were here with me on that fateful night, over ten years ago, isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes Anderson, but please, please, call me Ivan. And yes, that’s definitely correct. You and I, along with the rest of the world, know now what happened after the news of Veil broke that night on your program. We all know how quickly things progressed.”

  “That we do, Ivan. Veil took over the world.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, it certainly did. It changed lives. It changed the economical and political landscapes of the world. It changed every aspect of life you can imagine from law to religion to sports to music to movies to medicine and even to sex. There hasn’t been a part of life Veil didn’t eventually touch and transform.”

  “But there was one thing, Ivan, one thing it took Veil this long to accomplish, one person it took Veil ten years to weed out.”

  “Yes, Anderson.”

  “And that person was introduced to us in part some ten years ago, on this show. We all became aware of that person right as very the news of Veil broke.”

  “True.”

  “Let’s play a clip from that night, shall we? Here’s Dr. Hunter Kennerly.”

  Let me take this moment to also state that this remarkable, life-changing technology, wouldn’t have been possible without the genius of Dr. Jin Tsay, who cannot be here with us today because, unfortunately, he was murdered in an attempt by the government to steal the technology from him.

  “Now Ivan, that story has an ending tonight.”

  “Yes it does. There is finally an ending.”

  “Yes, as almost all of you know, as almost each one of you out there Veiled the trial earlier today, the murderer of the Great Dr. Jin Tsay was tried and sentenced this afternoon. As almost the entire world knows, that murderer’s name was Lundy, and after one hundred convictions, all convictions for murder, well, today that monster found the ultimate justice when the Veil Atonement for the murder of Dr. Tsay ended with his death. Today’s trial ended with the surprising, brutal death of Lundy.”

  “It did, Anderson. Nearly the entire world witnessed as Lundy perished right before the Great Widow Tsay’s eyes. The court doctor speculates the final vAtonement was too much for Lundy to handle. His heart and mind couldn’t take any more.”

  “I bet, I bet. Now after ten years, that story has an end. After ten long years, the murderer of the Great Jin Tsay has been brought to justice.”

  “Yes, Anderson.”

  “Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, that is not why we’re here tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Though the entire world is aware of the death of Dr. Tsay’s murderer, it is with heavy, deeply saddened hearts that we inform you that Dr. Kenneth Wise, friend and colleague of Jin Tsay, passed away today, immediately following the trial of Dr. Tsay’s murderer.”

  “From what the court doctor speculated, Anderson, Dr. Wise succumbed to a heart attack shortly after acting as the vAtoner for Dr. Tsay’s murder. The Widow Tsay requested Dr. Wise take her place as vAtoner, and the court doctor speculated the stress exacerbated a preexisting condition that lead to Dr. Wise’s untimely death. It is unfortunate.”

  “So unfortunate, Ivan. What a loss. And for such a selfless act. In honor of his friend and simply stepping in for his friend’s wife, the Great Widow Tsay. It seems like such an unnecessary, bittersweet ending to this chapter in the story of Veil. When we return we’ll spend the next hour looking back on the life of Dr. Kenneth Wise, one of the legendary Tsay Trustees. He was a man who captured the hearts and minds of our New Veil World. A man whom a decade ago—along with the gentleman who was later to become his husband—came on this show in honor of his friend, to give the world the revolutionary gift of Veil.”

  He raised his hand to knock but heard the broadcast through the bedroom door and decided it would be best to wait. He wasn’t sure how often Hunter watched the recording. Hunter probably still watched it pretty damn regularly, even after all those years. There was no way in hell Roy could knock on the door after hearing what Hunter was watching in there.

  Roy Houze considered himself a practical man. He resigned himself to be of below-average intelligence, but felt he compensated with above-average practicality. Being as practical as he was, Roy preferred to avoid any risk of confrontation with the obscenely loose cannon otherwise known as Hunter Kennerly. He slunk away from Hunter’s bedroom door and crept down the hall.

  Roy headed to the kitchen to sit and wait. Although the two men were what most reasonable people would consider longtime friends, Hunter still made Roy so nervous that he didn’t feel comfortable making himself a drink or rummaging for something to eat. So, he sat in the kitchen. He simply sat and waited.

  He didn’t have a plan. As far as Roy kne
w, Hunter would remain in his room until he fell asleep for the night. Roy didn’t know how long he should sit and wait, but he knew he’d be there until he decided to either knock on Hunter’s bedroom door or leave and come back some other day.

  Roy assumed that when the time came to decide, he’d just know it was time to decide; he had no idea what that decision was going to be. Hell, before he could make his decision, he still had to determine how long he intended to sit and wait. The whole thing began to confuse him, and he started to forget why he was at Hunter’s house in the first place.

  “How did you get in here?” Hunter caught Roy off guard.

  Hunter’s house shoes skimmed along the hardwood floors that led into the kitchen, so he made surprisingly little noise during his approach. Brock always likened it to Hunter being a gay, alcoholic ninja. Roy’s earlier attempt to creep down the hallway failed miserably and after recognizing his plump acquaintance’s trademark sloppy plodding, Hunter decided to make use of his gay ninja skills—plus he needed a drink anyway.

  His skills were apparently intact: Roy looked like he about shat himself and hadn’t produced a reply.

  “Roy!” Hunter shouted and repeated himself, “How the hell did you get in here?”

  Still somewhat startled, Roy groped inside a pocket, took out his key, held it up and jingled it. Hunter asked the same question each time Roy showed up at the house, and each time Roy responded in the same manner.